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- The Bride of the Nile, Volume 11. - 2/9 -

hopes for her; he desired that Orion should be called as being best able
to account for the meaning of the letter he had written but never sent.

On this the young man appeared, and though he and Paula did their utmost
to preserve a suitable demeanor, every one could see the violent
agitation they felt at meeting each other in such a situation. Horapollo
never took his eyes off Orion, whom he now saw for the first time, and
his features put on a darkening and menacing expression.

The young man acknowledged that he had written the letter in question,
but he and Paula alike referred it to the danger with which the
sisterhood had long been threatened from the patriarch's hostility. The
assistance which, in that document, he had refused he would have afforded
readily and zealously at a later and fit season, and he could have
counted on the aid of the Arab governor Amru, who, as he would himself
confirm, shared the views of the Mukaukas George as to the nuns' rights.

At this the old sage murmured loud enough to be heard: "Clever, very
clever!" and the Vekeel laughed aloud, exclaiming:

"I call that a cunning way of lengthening your days! Be on your guard,
my lords. These two are partners in the game and are intimately allied.
I have proof of that in my own hands. That youngster takes as good care
of the damsel's fortune as though it were his own already, and what is
more. . . ."

Here Paula broke in. She did not know what the malicious man was going
to say, but it was something insulting beyond a doubt. And there stood
Orion, just as she had pictured him in moments of tender remembrance; she
felt his eye resting on her in ecstasy. To go up to him, to tell him all
she was feeling in this critical struggle for life or death, seemed
impossible; but as the Vekeel began to disclose to their judges matters
which concerned only herself and her lover, every impulse prompted her to
interpose and, in this fateful hour, to do her friend such service as she
once, like a coward, had shrank from. So with eager emotion, her eyes
flashing, she interrupted the negro "Stop!" she cried, "you are wasting
words and trouble. What you are trying to prove by subtlety I am proud
and glad to declare. Hear it, all of you. The son of the Mukaukas is my
betrothed!"

At the same time her eye sought to meet Orion's. And thus, in the very
extremity of danger, they enjoyed a solemn moment of the purest, deepest
happiness. Paula's eyes were moist with grateful tenderness, when Orion
exclaimed:

"You have heard from her own lips what makes the greatest bliss of my
life. The noble daughter of Thomas is my promised bride!"

There was a murmur among the Jacobite judges. 'Till this moment several
of them, oppressed by the heat, had sat dreaming with their heads sunk on
their breasts, but now they were suddenly as wide-awake and alert as
though a jet of cold water had been turned on to them, and one cried out:
"And your father, young man? You have forgotten him in a hurry! What
would he have said to such a disgrace to his blood as your marriage to a
Melchite, the daughter of those who caused your two brothers to be
murdered? Oh! if the dead could. . . ."

"He blessed our union on his death-bed," Orion put in.

"Did he, indeed?" asked another Jacobite with sarcastic scorn. "Then
the patriarch was in the right when he refused to let the priests follow
his corpse. That I should live to be witness to such crimes!"

But such words fell on the ears of the enraptured pair like the chirping
of crickets. They felt, they cared for nothing but what this blissful
moment had brought them, and never suspected that Paula's glad avowal had
sealed her death-warrant.

The wrath of the Jacobite faction now hastened the end. The prosecutor,
an Arab, now represented how many Moslems had lost their lives in the
affair of the nuns, and once more read Orion's letter. His Christian
colleagues tried to prove that this document could only refer to the
flight, so ingeniously plotted, of the sisters; and now something quite
new and unlooked-for occurred, which gave a fresh turn to the
proceedings: the old man interrupted the Kadi to make a statement.
At this Paula's confidence rose again for the last speaker had somewhat
shaken it. She felt sure that the tried friend and adoptive father of
her faithful Philippus would take her part.

But what was this?

The old man seemed to measure her height in a glance which struck to her
heart with its fierce enmity, and then he said deliberately:

"On the morning of the nuns' flight the accused, Paula, went to the
convent and there tolled the bell. Contradict me if you can, proud
prefect's daughter; but I warn you beforehand, that in that case, I shall
be compelled to bring forward fresh charges."

At this the horror-stricken girl pictured to herself the widow and
daughter of Rufinus at her side on the condemned bench before the judges,
and felt that denial would drag her friends to destruction with her; with
quivering lips she confirmed the old man's statement.

"And why did you toll the bell?" asked the Kadi.

"To help them," replied Paula. "They are my fellow-believers, and I love
them."

"She was the originator of the treasonable and bloody scheme," cried the
Vekeel, "and did it for no other purpose than to cheat us, the rulers of
this country."

The Kadi however signed to him to be silent and bid the Jacobite counsel
for the accused speak next. He had seen her early in the day, and came
forward in the Egyptian manner with a written defence in his hand; but it
was a dull formal performance and produced no effect; though the Kadi did
his utmost to give prominence to every point that might help to justify
her, she was pronounced guilty.

Still, could her crime be held worthy of death? It was amply proved that
she had had a hand in the rescue of the nuns; but it was no less clear
that she had been far enough away from the sisters and their defenders
when the struggle with the Arabs took place. And she was a woman, and
how pardonable it seemed in a pious maiden that she should help the
fellow-believers whom she loved to evade persecution.

All this Othman pointed out in eloquent words, repeatedly and sternly
silencing the Vekeel when he sought to argue in favor of the sentence of
death; and the humane persuasiveness of the lenient judge won the hearts
of most of the Moslems.

Paula's appearance had a powerful effect, too, and not less the
circumstance that their noblest and bravest foe had been the father of
the accused.

When at length it was put to the vote the extraordinary result was that
all her fellow Christians--the Jacobites--without exception demanded her
death, while of the infidels on the judges' bench only one supported this
severe meed of punishment.

Sentence was pronounced, and as the Vekeel Obada passed close to Orion--
who was led back to his cell pale and hardly master of himself--he said,
mocking him in broken Greek: "It will be your turn to-morrow, Son of the
Mukaukas!"

Orion's lips framed the retort: "And yours, too, some day, Son of a
Slave!"--but Paula was standing opposite, and to avoid infuriating her
foe he was able to do what he never could have done else: to let the
Vekeel and Horapollo pass on without a word in reply.

As soon as the door was closed on this couple, Othman nodded approvingly
at Orion and said:

"Rightly and wisely done, my friend! The eagle should never forget that
he must not use his pinions in a cage as he does between the desert and
the sky."

He signed to the guards to lead him away, and stood apart while the young
man looked and waived an adieu to his betrothed.

Finally the Kadi went up to Paula, whose heroic composure as she heard
the sentence of death had filled him with admiration.

"The court has decided against you, noble maiden," he said. "But its
verdict can he overruled by the clemency of our Sovereign Lord the
Khaliff and the mercy of God the compassionate. Do you pray to Him--
I and a few friends will appeal to the Khaliff."

He disclaimed her gratitude, and when she, too, had been led away he
added, in the figurative language of his nation, to the friends who were
waiting for him:

"My heart aches! To have to pronounce such a verdict oppressed me like a
load; but to have an Obada for a fellow Moslem and be bound to obey him--
there is no heavier lot on earth!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

The mysterious old sage had no sooner left the judgment-hall with the
Vekeel than he begged for a private interview. Obada did not hesitate to
turn the keeper of the prison, with his wife and infant, out of his room,
and there he listened while Horapollo informed him of the fate to which
he destined the condemned girl. The old man's scheme certainly found
favor with the Negro; still, it seemed to him in many respects so daring
that, but for an equivalent service which Horapollo was in a position to
offer Obada, he would scarcely have succeeded in obtaining his consent.

All the Vekeel aimed at was to make it very certain that Orion had had a
hand in the flight of the nuns, and chance had placed a document in the
old man's hands which seemed to set this beyond a doubt.

He had effected his removal to the widow's dwelling in the cool hours of
early morning. He had taken with him, in the first instance, only the
most valuable and important of his manuscripts, and as he was placing
these in a small desk--the very same which Rufinus had left for Paula's
use--Horapollo found in it the note which the youth had hastily written
when, after waiting in vain for Paula as she sat with little Mary, he had
at last been obliged to depart and take leave of Amru. This wax-tablet,
on which the writing was much defaced and partly illegible, could not
fail to convince the judges of Orion's guilt, and the production of this
piece of evidence enabled the old man to extort Obada's consent to his
proposal as to the mode of Paula's death. When they finally left the
warder's room, the Negro once more turned to the keeper of the prison and
told him with a snort, as he pointed to his pretty wife and the child at
her breast, that they should all three die if he allowed Orion to quit
his cell for so much as an instant.